Sarah couldn’t follow what this was about. “No?”
“You should worry! Your figure’s a dream. Would you take off the bra now, please?”
“Pardon me, but there must be a mistake. I don’t need a leotard to talk about spiders. I’m only narrating the program.”
“And I’m only providing the costumes, sweetheart. Better talk to HS when we finish.”
Sloane was still in the rehearsal room with a group of technicians around him. Sarah waited ten minutes and several people introduced themselves and shook her hand. She was getting a taste for life as a celebrity, but she had to get things straight with Havelock Sloane.
“Sarah, my dear, you’ve been waiting!”
“I wanted to talk to you about my costume.” She told him the problem.
He took her arm. “Don’t let it bother you, my dear. I have something to show you.” He guided her into the corridor and toward the elevator. His entourage of six or seven followed close behind. It was like royalty on a visit.
They all got out of the elevator and entered a control room lined with an electronic console and monitors. Sloane opened another door and they were at the top of a staircase looking into a TV studio two floors high and as big as a concert hall. In the foreground was a scaffold web of gleaming white nylon cord, at least thirty feet in height. So accurate was it in construction that Sarah wouldn’t have been surprised to see a giant Theridion sisyphium dart down from the cluster of lights overhead.
“Come on!” urged Havelock. “It rates at least an ‘Oh, my God!’”
“I’m speechless.”
“I’ll show you something better than this.” He started down the stairs. Sarah followed with the others.
From ground level the place looked cavernous, with unlit areas extending way back into the recesses. Ahead in the dimness were more webs. Cables like creepers lay across their path.
“Someone give us some light here,” Havelock ordered.
Immediately there appeared ahead a mass of dead leaves the size of hearth rugs, and among them, skillfully camouflaged, the gaping, silk-fringed nest of a tube builder.
“Look inside if you want,” said Havelock, “but include me out.” He led them around a flat to the next set.
It was an orb web, still under construction, a beautiful, shimmering thing stretched between scaffolding artfully disguised as a window frame. The two technicians high on the rigging took nothing away from its realism. There was no question anymore in Sarah’s mind that Havelock’s idea of using people would work brilliantly.
“Like it?”
“Love it.”
“It’s a gift to the university when we finish shooting.”
“I wish it was mine.”
“I think you really mean that, Spider Girl. Where do you live — Grand Central Station? Listen, while we’re in production, it is yours. All the sets are yours. I want you to climb over the things, get the feel of them, tell us if anything’s wrong. Which brings us to costumes. The way I see it, we don’t want to film you parading through the studio pointing out sets like some lousy PBS documentary. That would be death. We have to integrate you with the sets, put you on the webs, not on the studio floor in front of them. You with me?”
Sarah nodded.
“So you need a web-climbing costume.”
“Wouldn’t a T-shirt and jeans be okay?”
“My dear, you’d be a knockout in anything, but this is a big-budget production. The viewing audience isn’t crazy about casual clothes. Remember, we also have to dress the rest of the cast.”
“There are others?”
“It’s not a one-girl show, Sarah. You can’t play every part. We need guys and gals to play male and female spiders. Some moths, a housefly. I’m putting them all in black tights. Didn’t I tell you I see it as ballet?”
“You did, but—”
“What’s the problem, my dear?”
“I thought I was the narrator.”
“You bet.”
“It sounds like you want me to play a spider.”
“Does that bother you?” Havelock took one of her hands and sandwiched it gently between his. “Are you worried about your image? Look, nothing we do in this production will make you less attractive to people. I already told makeup I want you Number One in the poster sweepstakes before this program is screened. The publicity boys upstairs are working on your schedule right now. They’ve already arranged for a two-page feature in TV Guide. Greg’s series is the lift-off, and then we have maybe two months to get you into orbit. Have I scared you?”
She was more stunned than scared. She shook her head and tried to catch up.
“To come back to what you were saying,” Havelock went on, “we’re billing you as the narrator, okay? But this show can’t look like amateur night. I want you at the center of the action. I want the public to identify with you, to feel what it’s like at the center of a web as well as have you explain it. I want them to see that web vibrate when a male arrives, and I want them pissing in their pants with tension when he approaches you. Yes, if you want it straight, you’re presenting the show and you’re playing Spider Girl — it’s the same thing.” He let go of her hand and started to walk away. “So do we have a deal, or would you like to call Shakespeare and tell him you want out?”
She let her eyes travel over the strands of the web to where the technicians were finishing a spiral. She answered, “You have a deal.”
8
On the first Monday in June, when exams were finished and people were waiting for their grades, talking nervously and loudly in groups over lunch, Meg spotted Nancy Lim alone at a table and took her tray over. It was weeks since they had talked.
“I’m so glad I found you,” Meg said. “I’ve been meaning to thank you every day, but I just haven’t seen you.”
“What for?”
“Your advice — about studying the ways of the Peahen.”
“Oh!” Nancy put her hand to her mouth and giggled a little. “I almost forgot. Did it do any good?”
Meg was so infected by the giggles that her eyes began to water. “It did!”
When their giggling had subsided enough, Nancy said, “Well, what do you know? Do you mean you have something going again with, uh, what was his name?”
“I sure do!” Meg described how her newly cultivated reserve had spurred Don into asking her to partner him in the seguidilla at the Amnesty International concert. “We’ve been rehearsing regularly ever since, and the concert is Saturday. Jesus, I was so scared! He’s unbelievably good at flamenco and he rented this sensational white dress for me. It’s years since I did any dancing. We worked on it, and he was so kind, and I tried my best, but, Nancy, flamenco is murder to learn. After I had got the steps and knew the music, I thought it would come right. How wrong could I be? I was proficient to a degree, but both of us knew it was nothing like it should be, and it wasn’t getting any better. I practically convinced myself I had a block about flamenco.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s a super guy. He kept his cool and went on with the rehearsals. Once when I was really down, he took me out to dinner.”
“He wasn’t dating you otherwise?”
Meg shook her head. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I think I told you before that I shacked up with him two weekends last semester. It meant a lot to me at the time, and I’m positive Don liked me — my body, I mean. Only I was so far gone about falling into bed with this fabulous guy everyone was crazy about that I totally failed to understand his needs as a person. Christ, that sounds corny! What I mean is, Don has a horror of being suffocated by a woman. He needs room to breathe. I got too close. It was lucky for me that I took your advice; otherwise our relationship would have been dead and buried. The dancing is Don’s way of keeping it alive. It’s another chance, and I can’t afford to flunk this one.”